


Throw Your Heart Over the Bar

by LeantheBean



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Titans (TV 2018)
Genre: Childhood Memories, Gen, Haly's Circus, Trapeze
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-21
Updated: 2018-11-21
Packaged: 2019-08-27 01:42:21
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,679
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16692988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LeantheBean/pseuds/LeantheBean
Summary: ...and your body will follow.Dick Grayson remembers the circus and tries to find a family, all at the same time.





	Throw Your Heart Over the Bar

The first thing Dick remembers is the feeling of chalk rubbing between the palms of his hands. It’s his earliest memory, and it sticks in his mind sometimes as a moment of contemplation, the tiny hands of a child clapping together as a cloud of white plumed around them. So many aspects of those early years felt saturated by joy, until it was capped in the end by a single moment of devastating loss that changed him forever. When he was a part of the circus it felt as though every day was an event punctuated by the laughing camaraderie of carnies in the boneyards and midways, as strongmen and acrobats jockeyed amongst each other.

Even after the circus is a reality long since passed, the feel of chalk pressing into his hands is something that never goes away. The sensation of it caking under his nails and stinging in the cracked rips of skin on his palms lasts through his time at the circus and into his time as Robin. It coats his hands as he trains in the cave and coats the insides of his green and black gloves on the streets. Even though Robin eventually becomes a figure associated with blood in his mind, for Dick the feeling of chalk provides momentary relief; it makes him think of the big top and learning to fly. 

He knows for certain that he got his first pair of grips when he was four. The moment was catalogued in a photograph that his parents kept on the mantel wherever they went. The three of them squeezed into frame gleefully; in the photo Dick the child is pushing his hands forward so that they partially obscure his mother’s face as she laughs. The grips are free of any chalk and still have the shine of waxed leather, but it is clear in the photo that they are going to be used and loved. 

They were leather dowel grips, and long after they are ripped and far too small Dick keeps them with him like a good luck charm. Dick remembers his mother’s dark brown hair falling around her face as she buckled the leather straps around his wrists tongue poking out the corner of her mouth. “Just like your daddy!” she says smiling once she finishes. Dick remembers her smile frozen in that moment for a long time. Sometimes when he dreams about it though her face is twisted in the scream from the moment she fell, a frozen expression of horror tainting what should have been a joyful moment. Sometimes he dreams of her falling, fingertips just missing his, face still smiling that beatific smile as though she had just finished fastening the grips around his wrists. Both dreams make him wake up encased in sweat with his heart pounding. 

After they die, Dick gets to pack one duffel bag to take with him to the foster care house. He packs alone, crying, the CPS agent waiting outside. He tosses the lucky grips from that halcyon day under the big top into the trash with force before he leaves. He keeps the ones he had been wearing as she fell though rolled up and tucked away in the bottom of his bag. 

Sometimes he takes out those grips and stares at them. It’s easier to remember his time with the circus when he looks at the chalk encrusted leather. It’s easier to remember his father’s response of, “A young professional,” as he looked over his wife’s neat work of her young son's grips, words twisting with a faint Slavic burr. Dick remembers how his father hoisted him giggling into the air before placing him on his broad shoulders and making a b line for the practice nets under the trapeze. 

He looks at the grips and other things come back too. Dick remembers the way his mother spoke Carpathian Romani to herself when irritated by the lack of progress on an act; he also remembers the way Russian and Polish flew fast and hard between his father, mother, and the acrobats whenever there was something to complain about. Whether it was the townies, the Master of Ceremonies, or even the state of the weather there was always something new to gossip about. They named him Richard, a good American name, so that he would have a place in the new country no matter how far the circus wandered. Even though Dick made sure not to lose the Russian language his parents had taught him, the Romani was never something he could understand enough of to hold on to. 

His mother was the only member of the circus who spoke it. He knew more Cantonese then Romani if only from exposure. There was a troupe of high wire and slack line specialists that joined the circus for a whole season who ensured Dick understood what they were saying, they were all very taken with the boy raised in a circus world. 

At first Dick couldn’t understand their fascination with him, the way they watched him swing over the practice nets alongside his parents, twisting and somersaulting around the bar. It was Nadia the contortionist who finally managed to explain it. “We escaped to the circus solnyshko, so did they, the circus is where we all came to be free. You were raised in the world we love, you embody it. How could they not want to watch you enjoy what they love?” It seemed to Dick as good of an explanation as any. 

Nadia was one of his favorite babysitters in the day. Once a rhythmic gymnast, she performed a viscerally unsettling contortion act where she moved a glittering golden ball down the arching bend of her back while in a handstand to cup it in the curve of her neck where she daintily picked it up with the tips of her toes. The entire act centered around the ball never touching the ground, no matter the bizarre the feats of balance and flexibility that were contorting her body into a pretzel. 

(Zucco’s son bashes her face in and sends the pictures to the Gotham Police department. A tiny shithead wearing Robin's colors turns up with the snuff photos in hand. The kid loves knocking heads together, loves the world Dick is finding it harder and harder to stand, the world that perverted his colors. “Why do you think we dress like this” he shouts, he snarls. “It’s to draw fire” he says, and Dick wants to cry. 

He thinks of Nadia handing him a red tunic and green leggings, thinks of the yellow sequins and the way she would tut over the chalk handprints on his thighs and torso. “So hard on your parent’s colors solnyshko, trying to make the Flying Grayson’s have white in the color scheme?”

There’s a lot of things about Jason that make Dick want to smash his face into a wall, but his presumption about Dick’s colors takes the lead. The situation isn’t helped at all by the fact that Jason is forever associated with the final murder of Haly’s Circus in his head. It’s hard not to shoot the messenger that brings word of your family's murder, even if it is only a little and only in your head.)

Dick thinks that his reaction to the photographs would have been different if he had been ten instead of fourteen when he left the circus world. His reaction would have been one of a child grieving the murder of a half forgotten dream, rather than an adult mourning the permanent loss of a family held away by nothing more than fearful reticence to expose the person he had become. If Dick had been younger it would have been easy to take the gift that Bruce had given him without any hesitation and gently forget world he had once belonged to. If he had been younger it would have been easy to let the faces of his parents slip away from the front of his mind. It would have been easy to let the love Bruce gave be enough. It would have been easy to be happy, but Dick was older.

He doesn’t only have the half-forgotten wisps of childhood, the feel of chalk against his hands, he also remembers the shouting fights between him and his father in Russian over attending high school in one place while the rest of the circus tried to pretend their drama wasn’t the most interesting thing happening that week. He remembers his mother sighing as he stared blankly at her after long Romani phrases came tumbling out before calling him the most ungrateful offspring to walk the earth. 

He remembers his parents talking to him about the trips they planned to take with him as a family, and the acts they planned together as coworkers. He remembers his father wrapping him in his arms and cupping the back of his head as Dick sobbed into his shoulder, mourning a heartbreak caused by a sweet townie girl during one of their stops through Iowa. He remembers his mother cooking perogi that night and running her hands through his hair before kissing the top of his head and announcing to the table at large that there was a girl out there who would appreciate her baby boy. Dick had real parents he loved and who loved him, and he remembers it for what it was even with its imperfections, a family.

Bruce took him in, but he’ll never think of Bruce as his dad. Batman’s his partner, and Bruce is his guardian but they’re not a family in quite the same way. Whatever bonded them wasn’t the joy and love of his family before, it was something darker, more blood-soaked by half. Jason’s joy unnerves him. It’s hard to picture Bruce as a haven, a person with whom the world seems less heavy, less horrible. 

His mother would be ashamed of the way he can’t seem to like Jason Todd. The whole circus was a family, bound together by profession and circumstance and shared love. In the circus you picked up acts for however long they were willing to tour with you and when they came along everyone looked out for each other. There were the core pieces that were part of every show for as long as Dick could remember, but in and out throughout there were friends and teachers, helping educate and guide and protect. “This is one of your people”, his mother's voice whispers in his head as he looks at Jason. “You love and want the same things. You are brothers in spirit. Embrace him.” Dick takes a little heart in knowing that his father would have rolled his eyes at his mother’s theatrics before smacking Dick upside the head. He can practically see her pursing lips and furrowing brow, as he glares openly at the boy dressed as Robin offering him a fist-bump. 

Then again, it’s not like the circus rules apply. There’s no way to go back to a world where he was just a boy who could fly. No way to go back to a time before Bruce, before Robin, before the fall. He doesn’t even hate who he is now most days. Trapeze artists are beautiful, but they can’t fix the world. Dick wants to fix the world. On their best days though, trapeze artists fix each other. 

They throw each other, catch each other, and grip tight enough to defy the downward pull of gravity. Trapeze artists make families of people from different places and with strange experiences. Once upon a time Dick was a trapeze artist. 

When Jason screams at him about hypocrisy and identity, shouts that Dick is the one confused, the one who doesn’t know who he is, it kills Dick because he does, he deeply truly does. He’s Robin, he’s Detective Dick Grayson, trying to fix the world. He is miles away from being a trapeze artist. Dick stares at an angry boy kicking unconscious cops on the ground and has no idea how to make him family, no idea how to even try or even how to want to, and Dick hates himself a little for it. He can’t help but think that his mother would hate him too. 

It doesn’t help that he can’t seem to find a home wherever he goes. He got close with Bruce, but the price of belonging in that house, the price of being what Bruce wanted him to be was far too high, so he ran. Bruce calls him after he leaves for Detroit, but Dick ignores it and lets the phone ring. The voice message Bruce leaves is a long sigh before saying, “You might not be my Robin, but you’re still my kid.” The click at the end feels final. 

Dick doesn’t know how to do family by halves. He doesn’t know how to leave Batman and keep Bruce; he doesn’t think he’s that lucky. Surely if it were possible to do he would have stayed. Surely if Bruce had any sort of separation from his alter ego his house wouldn’t have felt so much like a prison in those later days, his voice when talking about Dick’s grades wouldn’t have ached with nearly so much disappointment.

Dick doesn't know how to do anything by halves, which is how Dick knows he’s fucked as soon as Rachel gets kidnapped and Dawn gets put in the ICU. He’s going to chase this girl to the end of the world, and that’s just that. He hates it. The whole point of leaving Bruce was getting to have a life, a family, that wasn’t entirely composed of universe shattering crises and dark masks. Of course the first person who he gets attached to is the kid with world ending powers. Of course it is.

There’s nothing for it though, this kid’s his kid. Even though he screws it all up, picking the wrong words until he gets a push in the right direction from Kory, he's going to keep on trying. 

Standing at Kory’s side, Rachel accuses him of trying to leave her behind, and Dick doesn’t quite know what to say, she’s not entirely wrong, but she’s certainly not right either. Saying that things changed is an understatement. From the outside, saying that he wants to be a trapeze artist borders on deliberately unrelated to the point of being insulting.

He thinks of his family as she snipes at his dedication. His father would have placed a muscled mitt of a hand on the top of her head and said “Zaika we’re from circus, we always leave unless you coming with," before picking her up and plopping her on his shoulders. His mother would have knelt down and held her hands, would have made Rachel believe in her love with a few sweetly well-chosen words, before sweeping Rachel off her feet and kidnapping her away to live under the big top. Even Bruce would have laid a heavy hand on her shoulder and given her a place to be free, to be safe. Dick doesn’t know how to do any of those things. He doesn’t have a circus or a mansion. After the addition of Garfield he doesn’t even have his Porcha. 

When he gets the minivan though, it feels like flying through space without a net. He sees Kory’s smile and it feels like the steady smack of hands catching wrists as a cloud of chalk erupts from the grips. He watches Gar and Rachel go back and forth about video games while stuffing their cheeks full of pizza, and he hears the crunch of popcorn, smells the caramel, and sees the echoes of the midway in their smiles. It’s something new and different, not the family of the circus, held together by chalk and grips, not the family of bats and birds bound by violence and shared revenge, but it might just be good anyway. 

He’s not a trapeze artist but he’s trying, by god he’s trying.

**Author's Note:**

> I found it interesting that this iteration of Dick has the circus accident happen when he was a bit older. I think the show presents a Dick Grayson that makes sense in this context and has his character be informed because of it, so I kind of wanted to show the thought processes of someone for whom the tragedy of his parent's death is not just closer to the forefront, but also informs his understanding of the universe around him more. 
> 
> I also wanted to think about Jason as Titan's presents him; because from a batfamily perspective I think Titans sets up Dick and Jason to have a really complex relationship where Dick isn't willing to reach out to the person who, for all intents and purposes is his little brother, because Jason shows up touting all this stuff about Robin as though he knows it for sure and waving around the photos of Dick's dead family like it's just an unimportant example of crime rather than something personal. I think a lot of people get caught up in the Red Hood!Jason narrative, and as part of that redemption arc for Jason like to blame Dick for not being a good brother to him before his death and then trying really hard with Tim after it, but I really liked how Titan's gave context for both why that is, and why in many ways it's justified. 
> 
> I love circus flyboy Dick, and I love mature big brother nightwing dick, but this show is making me fall in love with angry robin dick right alongside these other iterations.


End file.
